Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Overnight Trip to Sweden !

So on my second day of work, DIS brought us - the whole group that I will be interning with this upcoming semester : 23 females, 2 males - took an adventure trip to Sweden. The trip was to encourage team bonding, and to train us on how to be fabulous study tour leaders. I will lead a group of students on a canoeing and hiking trip to Sweden in the first weekend of September. This tour was great practice and I'm so excited about it.

We took a bus and ferry to reach our destination in Kullaberg, Sweden. Our first adventure was orienteering- where you are given a map, compass, and several other tools, and then are expected to head out in search of 5 clues/missions. When you find each one, you must then complete the challenge described, for example : build the tallest rock tower you possibly can in 10 minutes, solve 3 tangram puzzles, or guess the distance of certain objects. All in all it was a really fun exercise and a good team building experience. Then we had a lunch of sandwiches from Lagkagehuset, one of my favorite bakeries in Denmark.

view from one of the checkpoints of the exercise - we had to guess how far the lighthouse was.I think it was like 400 m ? I can't remember !

After stuffing myself with a 12 inch hummus and vegetable sandwich, we were then informed that we would be making our way to a café for coffee and cakes ! Woohoo !! It was called Flickorna Lundgren, and was favorited by late king Gustav Adolf VI. His favorite thing to order was the 'Vaniljhjärtan' - Custard filled vanilla hearts ! Let me tell you - they were perfect and delicious. The outside was light and crisp and had a specific taste that reminded me traditional sugar Christmas cookies. The custard filling was thick and sweet, yet still not too heavy. I savored my treat while sipping coffee, and having a lovely conversation with some of my new coworkers.

such a lovely setting for a sweet summer café, built into the hills and woods of Sweden

fantastic pastries - DIS ordered 2 for each of us !! They really are so kind !

Upon leaving the beautiful garden party café, we headed towards our final destination, a homey hostel, which I forget the name of. It was owned by a very sweet couple and such a great atmosphere of community and simple pleasures. Our group had a great barbecue, followed by the Viking stick game (lol i don't know the real name of it but its a lawn game where you through 12 in wooden sticks at the other team's blocks trying to knock them over - very fun) and we finished the night with a bonfire and s'mores ! One of my fellow interns made the hilarious joke of making an open face s'more and called it a 'smørre s'more' !!!!hahahahaha!!!! (its so funny because smørrebrod is the name of the traditional Danish open faced sandwiches)

The original plan was that myself and a few others were going to be adventurous and sleep in a tent for the night. When we heard the tent would now be a tipi, we were even more excited. When I found out the tipi did not have a liner on the ground and was just open to the grass, I lost all interest. We all ended up sleeping inside :P but it was still super fun and cozy.

our would-be tipi

All in all it was a great bonding experience - I felt like I was at girl scout camp, and also very informative about what we will be encountering when we are study tour leaders. good fun :D